From new demands to the need for hyper-personalization: generative AI at the service of customer relationships.

Generative AI personalizes and optimizes marketing strategies, signifying a decisive turning point in customer engagement and campaign performance. Here’s a look back at what Hanan Ouazan, Partner Data Science & Lead Generative AI at Artefact, had to say at Hubforum 2023.

The generative AI revolution: a technology for everyone

Since the dawn of computing, programming languages – which are far removed from human logic – have been the preferred means of communicating with machines. Then, as technology advanced, user-friendly languages such as C, Java and Python emerged. Following in the footsteps of no-code and computing for all, the rise of generative AI represents a significant paradigm shift. For the first time, it’s no longer up to humans to make the effort to communicate with machines. Rather, machines are adapting to human language, making computing and AI accessible to the broadest possible audience.

This change has generated widespread enthusiasm, with an impact on all sectors, especially marketing. Proof of this is the one million ChatGPT users reached in less than five days in November 2022, at the time of its release. Meanwhile, the spectacular fundraising of over 10 billion euros for Open AI testifies to the financial appeal and growing confidence in the potential of generative AI.

“It’s no longer a question of learning to communicate with machines, but of machines making the effort to understand us. That’s the real turning point: we can all interact with the machine without any technical skills.”
Hanan Ouazan, Partner Data Science & Lead Generative AI, ARTEFACT

Generative AI raises customer relationship standards

The marketing and sales sector is probably the most promising for generative AI. The advent of ChatGPT and BARD has transformed the way consumers can interact with chatbots. These solutions offer instant and relevant responses to questions. Previously, a kind of compromise between the efficiency of human customer service and the availability of low-performance chatbots was accepted. Today, the user experience has been redefined. Consumers demand an equivalent level of service from all companies, creating a new standard for online interactions.

For this reason, Artefact, in partnership with Google Cloud, conducted a qualitative and quantitative study with over 65 companies to identify emerging trends in expressed needs and use cases that should be prioritized for deployment with generative AI. The results of this work are shared in a white paper designed to help decision makers navigate the complex and diverse landscape of generative AI.

Generative AI impacts different stages of the marketing funnel

Generative AI has the capacity to process huge volumes of data, which can then be activated for the benefit of marketing strategy.

  • Insights and audience: Generative AI digests large volumes of data, which are then extracted for activation and more precise customer targeting. As a result, marketing teams gather more relevant insights.

  • Content creation: It becomes faster. Generative AI facilitates the diversification of formats and rapid production of variations. While this technology does not fundamentally change creative processes, tools like Midjourney, Dall-e, and ChatGPT (to name but a few) significantly enhance creative capabilities during design. They allow for the rapid creation of storyboards, mock-ups, and images. And AI inspires innovative ideas, such as inventing the next verses of a rap song or (re)bringing historical figures to life.

  • Activation and personalization: The ability to generate content on a large scale opens the door to personalized marketing campaigns on an unprecedented scale. Audience segmentation becomes more precise, enabling more targeted activation at each stage of the marketing funnel. As a result, generative AI improves understanding of user journeys and allows activation adapted to tone and style according to channel.

  • Lifetime value management: Generative AI transforms customer support. Chatbots become smarter and more accurate, and call center agents are empowered to provide faster, more relevant responses to customer queries. In addition, generative AI offers a 360-degree view of customers and prospects, paving the way for greater responsiveness.

“Generative AI helps discern target intentions by enhancing social listening and understanding online journeys. Messages are delivered when internet users are most likely to be receptive, leading to better conversion.”
Hanan Ouazan, Partner Data Science & Lead Generative AI, ARTEFACT

Generative AI for more effective marketing: a still imperfect model

Despite the obvious benefits, challenges remain. The reliability of generated models (factual errors and hallucinations), risks of bias, misinformation, and intellectual property issues are all concerns to address. Regulation also represents a challenge, as does the control of these generative AI models, which must be supervised by humans. Marketing in particular lacks tools capable of managing the massive volumes of data generated.

Generative AI is revolutionizing marketing by meeting growing consumer expectations for more personalized interactions. Ultimately, generative AI will be multimodal for the benefit of marketing. It will be possible to interact with images, text, video and sound on the same tool.
The practical applications of this technology in content creation, audience segmentation, and campaign personalization mark the beginning of a new and promising era. An era that begins the march toward marketing’s ultimate goal: delivering the right message to the right person at the right time.

Watch the full Hubforum on generative AI and how it’s transforming marketing, on YouTube.